Essay on The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Spiritual Awakening

He went to his study, lay down, and once again was left alone with it. Face to face with It,

unable to do anything with It. Simply look at It and grow numb with horror" (Tolstoy, 97).

Death takes on an insidious persona as it eats away at Ivan Ilyich, a man horrified at the prospect of losing his life. Even more horrifying is the realization that despite his prominence and prosperity as a Russian high court judge, Ilyich has done nothing to make his life worth saving.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich begins at the end, with his associates receiving the news of his passing. Here, Tolstoy emphasizes the diffident attitude the living…show more content…

From here, he develops a mysterious degenerative disease that causes him great pain and mental anguish. His familiars remain indifferent to his plight, driving him to greater anger, despair, and desperation. With exhausting pain and sorrow, Ilyich reassesses the value of his life in his final hours, allowing him to confront his imminent death with greater honor than he had ever achieved in his life.

The pathos of these ending scenes display Tolstoy's brilliance in characterization. Through his grotesque description of the illness itself: the morphine shots, reoccurring pains, and the degradation of assisted bowel movements, Tolstoy yields not only audience sympathy, but actual empathy for poor Ilyich. Suffering, under any circumstances, is universally understood. So too, is the terrifying prospect of losing one's life. Whereas no one around him can understand and react to his misery, the reader is driven to pity him. The death of Ivan Ilyich comes as a relief to all. Ilyich is relieved from the pain of dying and living a lie, his friends and family are relieved of obligation to the dying man, and the reader is relieved of a most harrowing emotional journey.

Initially, Tolstoy presents himself with a formidable challenge, eliciting compassion for a character that does not ostensibly deserve any sympathy. However, Tolstoy expands Ivan Ilyich into a complex protagonist with artless

The Death of Ivan Illych
In The Death of Ivan Ilych Leo Tolstoy conveys the psychological importance of the last, pivotal scene through the use of diction, symbolism, irony. As Ivan Ilych suffers through his last moments on earth, Tolstoy narrates this man's struggle to evolve and to ultimately realize his life was not perfect. Using symbols Tolstoy creates a vivid image pertaining to a topic few people can even start to comprehend- the reexamination of one's life while on the brink of death. In…

Philosophy of the Human Person
09-12-2010
Summary of The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy begins at the chronological end of Ivan Ilyich’s life. Members of a court proceeding were on break of the Melvinsky proceedings, and Pyotr Ivanovich proclaimed: “Ivan Ilyich is dead” (35). All the men in the courtroom at the time were supposedly “close acquaintances” of Ivan, but none remarked at the sadness of his death, but rather the chance of promotion all of the men would chance…

Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich
I related readily with Ivan Ilyich, the main character in Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. There was a time when I myself lived my life without regard to the spirituality of life. I, however, was very lucky in that it did not take death looming over my head to realize this. Maybe the fact that my bout of depression’s onset happened sooner in life allowed me to see it sooner. Eric Simpson put it best as “We all die, like Ilyich, and if we only…

Christain Theme of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich attacks the pursuit of material possessions. The Ilyich family bases itself upon the unsure foundation of wealth. As Ivan ascends the rungs of the corporate ladder, he acquires new possessions and articles. After joining the Civil Service, Ivan buys "new fashionable belongings" at the "very best shops" to keep up appearances (100). For his wedding to Fiorodovna, Ivan buys "new furniture, new crockery…

Futility of Life in The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Count Leo Tolstoy is considered Russia’s greatest novelist and one of its most influential moral philosophers. As such, he is also one of the most complex individuals for historians of literature to deal with. His early work sought to replace romanticized glory with realistic views. A good example of this is the way he often portrayed battle as an unglamorous act performed by ordinary men. After his marriage, though, Tolstoy started to reexamine…

The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Spiritual Awakening
He went to his study, lay down, and once again was left alone with it. Face to face with It,
unable to do anything with It. Simply look at It and grow numb with horror" (Tolstoy, 97).
Death takes on an insidious persona as it eats away at Ivan Ilyich, a man horrified at the prospect of losing his life. Even more horrifying is the realization that despite his prominence and prosperity as a Russian high court judge, Ilyich has done…

Ivan Ilyich
Themes of a Poor Life in
“The Death of Ivan Ilyich”
It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly place people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And…

Death of Ivan Ilych
1. Characterize the following individuals
Peter Ivanovich
Gerasim
Proskovya Fedorovna
Vasya
Indicate, as well, the ways, in which these individuals help or hinder Ivan Ilych’s spiritual growth.
2. How do (a) the stories associated with the Baal Shem Tov and (b) the biblical tale of Elisha in Damascus illustrate the spiritual journey undertaken by Ivan Ilych?
1.
Peter Ivanovich (known from now on as PI) was Ivan’s dearest…

The idea of salvation or having an awakening moment of one’s spirit is something that is different for every individual. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” demonstrates how a person can be brought to their redemption by unlikely characters. Hulga, from “Good Country People,” goes from being a woman who states to believe in nothing, to a woman who loses everything and is left at a place of confusion. The grandmother from “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is similar…

Life in The Death of Ivan Ilyich
In Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the story begins with the death of the title character, Ivan Ilyich Golovin. Ivan's closest friends discover his death in the obituary column in chapter one, but it is not until chapter two that we encounter our hero. Despite this opening, while Ilyich is physically alive during most of the story's action he only becomes spiritually alive a few moments before his death.
The life of Ivan Ilyich, we are…